bwanton] EARLY HISTORY OP THE CREEK INDIANS 85 
two I have given and 1 have recorded Menendez's visit to Gualc and 
the settlement of Jesuit missionaries there and at St. Helena. In 
his letter to Menendez, quoted above, Rogel says: 
Brother Domingo Augustin was in Guale more than a year, and he learned that 
language so well that he even wrote a grammar, and he died; and Father Sedeno was 
there 1 1 months, and the father vice provincial 6, Brother Francisco 10, and Father 
Alamo 1: and all of them have not accomplished anything. 1 
Had the grammar of Augustin been preserved we would not to-day 
consider the labors of these early missionaries by any means fruit- 
less; and it may yet come to light. 
In 1573 a Spanish officer named Aguilar and fourteen or fifteen 
soldiers were killed in the province of Guale. In 1578 Captain 
Otalona and other officials were killed in the Guale town of Ospogue or 
Espogue. 2 
After this field had been abandoned by the Society of Jesus it was 
entered by the Franciscans. According to Barcia, missions were 
opened in Guale by them in 1594, but unpublished documents seem 
to set a still earlier date. One of these would place the beginning 
of the work as far back as 1587. In 1597 there were five missionaries 
in this province and the work seemed to be of the utmost promise, 
when a rebellion broke out against the innovators, the mission sta- 
tion- were burned, and all but one of the friars killed. The follow- 
ing account contained in Barcia's Florida is from clerical sources: 
The friars of San Francisco busied themselves for two years in preaching to the 
Indians of Florida, separated into various provinces. In the town of Tolemaro or 
Tolemato lived the friar Pedro de Corpa, a notable preacher, and deputy of that doc- 
trina, against whom rose the elder son and heir of the chief of the island of Guale, who 
was exceedingly vexed at the reproaches which P^ather Corpa made to him, because 
although a < 'hristian, he lived worse than a Gentile, and he fled from the town because 
he was not able to endure them. He returned to it within a few days, at the end of 
September [1597], bringing many Indian warriors, with bows and arrows, their heads 
ornamented with great plumes, and entering in the night, in profound silence, they 
went to the house where the father lived; they broke down the feeble doors, found 
him on his knees, and killed him with an axe. This unheard-of atrocity was pro- 
claimed in the town: and although some showed signs of regret, most, who were as 
little disturbed, apparently, as the son of the chief, joined him, and he said to them 
the day following: "Although the friar is dead he would not have been if he had not 
prevented us from living as before we were Christians: let us return to our ancient 
customs, and let us prepare to defend ourselves against the punishment which the 
governor of Florida will attempt to inflict upon us, and if this happens it will be as 
rigorous for this friar alone as if we had finished all; because he will pursue us in the 
same manner on account of the friar whom we have killed as for all.'' 
Those who followed him in the newly executed deed approved: and they said that 
it could not be doubted that he would want to take vengeance for one as he would take 
it for all. Then the barbarian continued: "Since the punishment on account of one 
is not going to be greater than for all, let us restore the liberty of which these friars 
i Ruidiaz, La Florida, n, p. 307; Barci?, La Florida, pp. 138-139. 
» Lowery, MSS. 
